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Miguel Alvarez
Miguel Alvarez is the tritagonist and primary Latino inmate featured in Oz. Portrayed by Kirk Acevedo. Plot Summary Prisoner #97A413. Convicted February 3, 1997 - Assault with a deadly weapon, criminal mischief in the second degree. Sentence: 15 years, up for parole in 2. Convicted in 1998 for assault on a C.O. ''Parole denied in 2002 Season 1 Alvarez is sent to Oz for beating up a 75 year old man for scratching up his car. Alvarez arrives and is stabbed in the receiving and discharge area. Regarding this very first attack, it is never revealed why it was committed and no precise information is given about the attacking inmate. He is serving 15 years and is up for parole in 2 for aggravated assault. His girlfriend Maritza is pregnant with their child and is serving in a Woman's facility in the state. He has no intention of being there for the birth of his child since he has never met his father Eduardo or grandfather Ricardo who both are serving life sentences in Oz. Eduardo cannot talk because he has no tongue since a Haitian inmate cut it out when he first arrived in Oz. Ricardo cut the Haitian's heart out and serves life in solitary confinement. At the urging of Father Mukada, the prison priest, Ricardo and Eduardo manage to convince Miguel to be there for his child's birth and it changes his perspective on life. The baby however has a bad liver since Maritza and Miguel both did several drugs during her pregnancy. Miguel thinks that God is punishing him and cuts his face that night. The next day Miguel's baby dies. Distraught, Alvarez becomes a key player amongst the Latino inmates and takes over the gang when their leader is paroled. Ricardo, in the meantime, is suffering from Alzheimer's and Miguel is not sure of what to do about it. During the prison riot, Alvarez is a major leader and takes control of the hostages who are all correctional officers on staff and is particularly brutal with one of them. When the S.O.R.T. team takes control, Carlos Rodrigo (Miguel's friend) head is blown off next to Alvarez. Unlike the other riot leaders, Alvarez ends up in the infirmary after being shot by one of the S.O.R.T. members' rifle. Season 2 Alvarez is one of the Latino inmates let back into the newly built Em City. In this season, the Latinos are looking to move up in rank and are not sure whether or not to work with the Italian or Homeboy gangs in the drug trade. Schillinger, desperate to kill Beecher, tells Miguel that he can push things through the mail room for payment but when Alvarez gets too demanding, Schillinger dismisses him with an ethnic slur. Peter Schibetta, the son of slain Italian leader Nino Schibetta offers Alvarez a deal in the drug trade to kill Simon Adebisi. Adebisi does the same thing and Alvarez and the Latinos sit on the side to see what is going down. Later, Warden Glynn is upset over his daughter's raping and Miguel knows the men that are responsible and tortures Glynn with this knowledge since he feels Glynn was too brutal towards him by attacking him and singling him out. Meanwhile, Peter Schibetta is raped by Simon Adebisi and Alvarez wishes to work with the Homeboys but Adebisi says no since he failed to help him take down the Italians. The Latinos especially Carmen Guerra are growing tired with Alvarez's passive leadership and are then brought higher up in standing when an old school gang leader, Raoul "El Cid" Hernandez arrives. Hernandez dislikes Alvarez immediately and casts him out for being "too white." Alvarez is light in complexion, but what Hernandez really means is that Alvarez lacks the "cojones" ("balls") to be a member of El Norte. Alvarez tells Hernandez that he has no problem with him running the gang being who he is and tells him he will do whatever is necessary to get into the good graces of El Cid. El Cid orders him to blind a new CO, Latino officer Eugene Rivera. Apparently Rivera is a former rival gang member of El Cid's and will make El Norte have an unpleasant time as long as he works in Oz. If Alvarez does not do this then he will be out of El Norte and killed. Alvarez blinds Rivera and is thrown into solitary as a result. Season 3 In solitary, Alvarez is being reduced to drinking his own urine to survive. This is because the COs "forget" to feed him regularly since he blinded Eugene Rivera. Father Mukada, Sister Pete, and Dr. Nathan think it is better to get Alvarez out of solitary. Alvarez had been taken off his meds and was attempting to commit suicide by hanging himself, ultimately he failed and was revived by Dr. Nathan. Glynn reluctantly agrees to let him out. In Em City for the time being he is allowed into El Norte. In the boxing ring, he agrees to represent the Latinos when inmate Carlo Ricardo is sent the hole. He boxes against a gay inmate (Jason Cramer) who beats him after Ryan O'Reily spikes Miguel's water. Losing to a gay inmate causes Miguel to be the subject of various ridicule and El Cid starts to question his worth once again. Later, the Latinos help Simon Adebisi take down the other Homeboys so that they can play a larger role in the drug trade. The drug leaders are now Hernandez, Pancamo, and Adebisi who are working as three way partners. Alvarez has agreed to interact with Eugene Rivera over the blinding, and Rivera is anything but forgiving throughout it. Hernandez at the pecking of Guerra starts to question Miguel's commitment to El Norte. When the Latinos steal drugs from Ryan O'Reily, O'Reily tips off the COs to bust El Norte, and Alvarez leaves the scene two seconds early and is not sent to solitary as a result. El Cid, angered by this thinks Alvarez snitched on them and orders Guerra and Ricardo to kill Alvarez. Alvarez instead kills Ricardo in self-defense and is thrown into solitary, but not before lying to Warden Glynn about the rape of his daughter. Season 4 Inside of solitary, Alvarez is harassed by an inmate, Louis Bevilaqua over the death of Carlo Ricardo. Alvarez now reveals that he knows it was Bevilaqua who raped Glynn's daughter. Hernandez and Guerra see to it that Bevilaqua gets a shank to kill Alvarez but instead, William Giles prevents Alvarez from dying and kills Bevilaqua. Alvarez is sent to the hospital and another attempt is made on him, this time by Carlos Martinez. Miguel lives and at this point has proved that he has more lives than a cat. In the hospital, Busmalis is digging a tunnel which Alvarez escapes through in the middle of the night. El Cid, furious demands that Alvarez be killed immediately by outside connections to El Norte. Alvarez is on the run for the remainder of the first half of this season (Acevedo, who plays Alvarez, needed to take some time off from the show to film the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.) and in the meantime Enrique Morales arrives in Oz. Morales is offered Hernandez's third of the drug money if he gets El Cid murdered. Morales considers El Cid to be too loco and "Old School" and is thereby not qualified to run El Norte and gets him murdered at the hands of Bob Rebadow. During the second half of the season Alvarez is captured near the Mexican border and when he is brought back to Oz, he is sent into solitary. Alvarez makes a deal with Warden Glynn to be a snitch in Em City if let back there and tries to get back into El Norte. Morales does not dislike Alvarez but Guerra still wants him dead. Guerra enlists Jorge Vasquez to murder Alvarez but instead Alvarez kills him by slicing his throat. Because of this beef, Morales cannot let Alvarez back into El Norte and Alvarez is sent to solitary for the remainder of the season. While in solitary, Alvarez smears his own feces around his cell. Season 5 The prisoners in isolation are let into Em City during a renovation and are told by Warden Glynn that if they behave, they don't have to go back. Alvarez thinks Glynn will have him sent back regardless so he is not in a mood to be well behaved. He offers a truce with Guerra offering him the opportunity to stab him without retaliation in the shoulder. Chico stabs him near the heart instead but Alvarez lives as usual. Morales tells him that he cannot get back into El Norte, but a truce and no violence pact will be enforced. A young Latino inmate, Jaime Velez, is impressed with Alvarez taking the stabbing like a man unafraid and tells Alvarez that he wants to work as his lieutenant. Alvarez uses this as an opportunity to kill Guerra, but Guerra kills Velez in the showers. Looking for salvation in his guilt over Velez's death, he signs up for a guide dog program being offered to the inmates. The woman running the program Alicia Hinden, is wary over Alvarez's history of violence but she allows him to participate when he tells her he wishes to do this to help Eugene Rivera, the CO he blinded. Miguel does a great job with the dog and wants Rivera to have it, but Eugene and his wife Tina are extremely hesitant in getting the dog. Rivera accepts though - he wants his wife to be free from taking care of him all the time. Alvarez gives him a special surprise. Under the impression that the Riveras spoke Spanish at home, Alvarez trains the dog in both English and Spanish commands. The dog went to Rivera after it was called in Spanish and for once, Alvarez felt he did something extraordinarily miraculous. McManus and Alicia Hinden were extremely impressed and both wrote letters of recommendation supporting Alvarez's parole. Warden Glynn does not believe Alvarez should leave Oz and influences the parole board to sway against Alvarez however. McManus warns Miguel about this, but he ends up holding his head high throughout going to the hearing. The parole board is particularly accusatory and belligerent with Alvarez and continuously questions him in a negative sense. One parole member in particular, Luis Ruiz, the only Latino member on the board is very hostile and asks Alvarez "What the fuck makes you think we should set you free, you little prick?". This causes Alvarez to assault Ruiz, and he is sent to solitary as a result. Season 6 At the solitary review, Alvarez is released against Warden Glynn's objections particularly at the hands of Tim McManus. McManus warns Guerra not to do anything towards Alvarez since he believes that everything bad Alvarez has done in Emerald City is somehow tied to Guerra. To both Alvarez and McManus' surprise, Guerra wants to be friends with Miguel. Morales offers Alvarez a chance back into El Norte if he spys on the Homeboys. Alvarez is trying to remain sane and clean so that he can possibly be paroled. Morales is later killed in the hospital after he is injured by CO Dave Brass and Guerra asks him to lead El Norte. Alvarez denies this since he still wants to be paroled. Alvarez receives word from his best friend that Maritza is cheating on him. Oddly enough, its Miguel's compadre who she is sleeping with. Alvarez also receives word that he is the sole beneficiary of Aryan inmate Wolfgang Cutler's will and testament. Vernon Schillinger demands that Alvarez give all the inheritance to Cutler's wife and he agrees but both he and Cathy Jo Cutler, Wolfgang's widow, develop some feelings for each other during the document signing. Schillinger is wary of this and has the Aryans attack Alvarez and gets Cathy Jo gone for good. In the meantime, a gay nightclub owner named Alonzo Torquemada is sent to Oz and is selling designer drugs called D-Tabs and wants Alvarez to be his partner in it. Torquemada is sexually obsessed with Alvarez who initially wants nothing to do with his drug business. Meanwhile, it is rumored that Ruiz will be the new head of the parole board, and McManus urges him to meet with Alvarez so that he can talk it over how the prisoner can be paroled. Ruiz agrees to meet with Alvarez one-on-one to everyone's surprise. In the meeting, Ruiz tells Alvarez that he was purposefully hostile at the last hearing because he wanted to see how well Alvarez handled himself in the meeting. He also tells Alvarez that he grew up in Alvarez's same neighborhood and he is tired of seeing Latinos like Alvarez give the rest of them a bad name. He says that Alvarez will never leave Oz as long as he is the head of the board but they will go through the same procedure each year to mentally breakdown Alvarez. Frustrated, he gives in to Torquemada's drugs and sexual advances. Miguel is last seen being evacuated out of Oz after some poison was released inside the prison. Kill Count '''Personal' * Carlo Ricardo: Stabbed to death in self-defense. (1999) * Jorge Vasquez: Throat slashed with the Gillette Bayonet shank. (2001) Proxy *'Jaime Velez': Had his skull crushed against the shower wall by Chico Guerra. Alvarez ordered Velez to murder Guerra which ultimately backfired. (2002) Cellmates Emerald City *'Donald Groves': Shared a cell with Groves until Groves got sent to death row for the murder of C.O. Lawrence Smith. (1997) *'Jorge Vasquez': Moved in the same cell as Alvarez, when Em City opened back up, eventually Alvarez got sent to solitary for the attempted murder on C.O. Eugene Rivera. (1998) *'Raoul "El Cid" Hernandez': Moved in Hernandez's cell when he got released from solitary confinement, then Alvarez gets sent back to solitary for the murder of Carlo Ricardo. (1999) - "Cruel and Unusual Punishments") *'Greg Penders': Shared the same cell until Penders got his dog to viciously attack C.O. Len Lopresti. (2002) *'Samuel Gougeon': Unexpectedly shared the same cell just before Alvarez went to his parole hearing. (2002) *'Carmen Guerra': Moved in Guerra's cell as they made friends again and after Enrique Morales was murdered by Nurse Grace. (2003) *'Alonzo Torquemada': Unexpectly moved in Alvarez's cell, where Alvarez started giving himself up to his sexual and drug advances. (2003) Category:Characters Category:Living Characters Category:Solitary Category:Gangsters Category:Prison gang leaders Category:Prison riot leaders Category:Characters who took part in Boxing Category:Emerald City Category:The Latinos Category:The Alvarez Family Category:Murderers Category:Drug addicts